Method of displaying information in stages

ABSTRACT

In a user interface displayed on the user&#39;s terminal device, a newspaper page image is maintained as it is while only information that is necessary to a user can be read through. Only readable headline information from a newspaper page is displayed as electronic data just as it is laid out on the newspaper page, and article information that is linked to the headline information is displayed on a display device as readable display data at a time when the readable headline information is designated selectively.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention

[0002] The present invention relates to a technology for displaying instages information received by a terminal device through a network.

[0003] 2. Description of the Related Art

[0004] Distribution of information through the Internet has becomecommon, and it has become possible for a user to access a server of anewspaper company and read conventional newspaper article information,too.

[0005] Incidentally, for the reading of this type of newspaper articleinformation it used to be common that the article information wasconverted into text code, images were converted to image informationcalled GIF or JPEG and these were displayed in a text format called HTMLby means of a browser program installed on the user s terminal.

[0006] Accordingly, on servers of each newspaper company, the user hasbeen provided texts, photograph images and advertisement imagesrearranged on a different layout on the general newspaper page.

[0007] However, as described above, different information layouts areused for the newspaper pages which are to be delivered and the articleinformation which is to be read on the Internet; therefore, according tothe current state of the technology the reader must be conscious of thisdifferent information layout when reading the article information on theserver, and the technology for effective article information layout onnewspaper pages, which were developed over many years, could not beutilized for the network distribution.

[0008] Accordingly, by making the entirety of pages in the newspaperreadable from the sever as image information, it is assumed to providethe information to the user in the layout formats of article informationas newspaper itself, however the amount of data for converting theentirety of the page into image information becomes greater than that ofconverting into character information, it is not practical for a userconnecting to the network via low-speed public lines to take a lot oftime to download the article information to terminal device.

[0009] The present invention is developed to solve problems such asthose described above. The present invention provides a displaytechnology, in a user interface displayed on the user's terminal device,for displaying in stages the article information in the condition of thepage image in newspaper being maintained, so that the user can read onlythe article which necessary information is contained.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0010] According to the present invention, only readable headlineinformation from a newspaper page is displayed as electronic data justas it is laid out on the newspaper page; and article information that islinked to the headline information is displayed on a display device asreadable display data when the readable headline information isselectively designated by the user.

[0011] Generally, for a reader who is reading a newspaper page that isdistributed on a paper medium, it is common that the reader first looksover the headlines on the page while reading only the articles in whichhe or she is interested.

[0012] According to the present invention, in order to realize, even ona network distribution system, this kind of reading process which isperformed by the reader on such the paper medium, the headlineinformation is first displayed on the terminal, just as they are laidout on the newspaper page. Then, in the case that any of the headlineinformation is selected by clicking on a mouse, the detailed article(the article information) of that headline information is displayed asreadable display data.

[0013] Accordingly, the server first distributes, to the terminaldevice, only the headline information is arranged on the newspaper pageso-called skeleton newspaper. This skeleton newspaper is comprised ofimage data, but in its substance only the headline information is realdata, so the distributed data has much less volume than the distributedimage data which turned all the newspaper article into, and it ispossible to display the headline information without stress even on auser terminal connected to low-speed public lines.

[0014] Also, a user operating a user terminal is let to read the pagesonly through the headline information and when a headline informationinterested among this clicked with a mouse and the like by the user, thedetailed article information which is linked to that headlineinformation is displayed.

[0015] In other words, the volume of information to be sent does notbecome great even at this stage so that the server distributes to theterminal device only the article information corresponding to theheadline information desired by the user.

[0016] The article information distributed at this time may be codeinformation encoded as a character line, or may be image data in whichthe article content has been turned into an image.

[0017] Further, displaying the characters and the background screen withcolor differentiation in-article units produces an effect the articletype can be easily distinguished visually.

[0018] The present invention enables the display of article informationin stages in a user interface displayed on the user's terminal device,in which a newspaper page image is maintained as it is while onlyinformation that is necessary to a user can be read through.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0019] In the accompanying drawings:

[0020]FIG. 1 is a system construction diagram illustrating oneembodiment of the present invention.

[0021]FIG. 2 is a flow chart illustrating an order of displaying auser's display screen of one embodiment.

[0022]FIG. 3 is a login screen of one embodiment.

[0023]FIG. 4 is a selection screen of a newspaper page of oneembodiment.

[0024]FIG. 5 is an example of a screen display of skeleton data.

[0025]FIG. 6 is an example of a display of article information in pageunits.

[0026]FIG. 7 is an example of a display of the article information inarticle units.

[0027]FIG. 8 is a diagram of explanation illustrating a method ofdistinguishing an partition of area of articles.

[0028]FIG. 9 is an example of a display of the article information bymeans of a character code in article units.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0029] Hereinafter, explanation will be made of an embodiment of thepresent invention based on the drawings.

[0030]FIG. 1 is a system construction diagram of one embodiment of thepresent invention.

[0031] The present embodiment is composed of a skeleton datadistribution server connected to a newspaper preparation system, and anarticle data distribution server. These two servers are connected to auser terminal (a user-side PC) through the Internet or other suchgeneral-purpose network.

[0032] In the present embodiment, the process of displaying informationin stages is realized by means of the cooperation between the skeletondata distribution server and the article data distribution server, andis controlled by programs installed into each of the servers. Theprogram can be stored in a storage medium such as a CD-ROM or a harddisk device, for example.

[0033] The skeleton data distribution server has a database, and imagefile data (the skeleton data such as shown in FIG. 5) in which only theheadline information of the newspaper pages has been turned intoelectronic data just as it was laid out on the newspaper pages isaccumulated. This image field data can be realized in the PDF formatproduced by Adobe, or in a general-purpose image data format such asJPEG or GIF format, for example.

[0034] This type of image file data composed of headline information maybe created from character code, which is to become the characters of aheadline as being the file attribute, and an intermediate file from thenewspaper article preparation system in which there is contained a fontdesignation value and headline designation information.

[0035] When the skeleton distribution server receives the intermediatefile from the newspaper article preparation system, it reads the valuedesignated in the file for the character font, recognizes charactershaving a designated font of a certain size or larger and charactershaving the headline designation information as being headlineinformation, and generates skeleton data composed of this headlineinformation and a frame diagram.

[0036] In this skeleton data, headlines and the coordinates informationfor each headline information are linked to an address (URL, or UniformResource Locator) of the article information (the article textinformation). This link may be stored as a table structure in an imagefile, or it may be downloaded to the user terminal as other filesseparately from the skeleton data.

[0037] The areas of the articles including the headline information areconstructed on a newspaper page with a complex rectangular shaped areasmarked off by horizontal and vertical lines, but it is possible todefine coordinates for all of these by considering them as combinationsof squares. For example, for defining an article area as shown in FIG.8, it is divided into three squares, and the coordinates of the lowerleft and upper right of each square are defined respectively (A1:A2,B1:B2, C1:C2), thereby defining the area of this article.

[0038] Then, by tracing the largest value and smallest value of the xycoordinates which satisfy these conditions, it becomes possible togenerate and display demarcation lines defining the outer frame of thisarticle. Displaying the outer frame of an article in this way enablesthe user to understand the proportion that the article occupies on thepage, and it becomes easy to determine whether the article is animportant article or not.

[0039] Further, a configuration is also possible in which the articleclassifications (ex, classification into events, industry and economics)are defined per each article area inside the demarcation lines, andthese may be displayed on the user terminal with color differentiationper classification.

[0040] With this technology of differentiating the articleclassifications by color in this way, it is possible to use the headlineinformation to perform text matching at the skeleton data distributionserver, setting the color corresponding to the attributes of theinformation in advance. For example, when the term “automobile” isincluded, this receives the color differentiation for “industry” or“economics,” and when the term “government regime” is included, thisreceives the color differentiation for “politics.”

[0041] Further, although there is a color differentiation method inwhich the letters themselves are displayed with color differentiation,it is also possible to color differentiate only the background screenwithin the demarcated area of the given article.

[0042] When any point of the article area containing headlineinformation is designated by means of a mouse or other auxiliary inputdevice, the headline corresponding to this coordinate and the URLcorresponding to this headline information (ex,http://www.nikkei230.co.jp/body.p!?ID=2000121500001) are read out, andaccess is made to the article data distribution server via this URL. Thearticle data distribution server has a newspaper article database, andthe article information corresponding to the article ID contained in theURL is read out from the newspaper article database.

[0043] Then, the article information is read out from the article datadistribution server and downloaded to the user terminal. At the userterminal the file of the article information downloaded in this way isdisplayed by means of a browser program such as Internet Explorer ofMicrosoft Corporation or Netscape Navigator of Netscape CommunicationsCorporation.

[0044] Next, explanation will be made of an order for displaying theheadline information and the article information on the user terminal,making reference to FIG. 2 through FIG. 7.

[0045]FIG. 2 is a block diagram depicting processing from a login screento display of the article information.

[0046] First, the user boots a communications application on the userterminal, and after that boots the browser program, designates apredetermined URL (i.e., the URL of the skeleton data distributionserver, such as http://www.nikkei230.co.jp)

[0047] The server sends the login screen depicted in FIG. 3 to the userterminal, and requests input of a user ID and password.

[0048] When the login is completed, an article selection screen depictedin FIG. 4 is displayed. In the same diagram, it is possible to select adaily morning edition or evening edition by checking a check box for thepages which the user desires to obtain. This check can actually beperformed by a left-click with the mouse and the like. In the samediagram, front page, a general topics page, a business general topicspage, a business finances page, a products page and a regional editionspage are selected respectively.

[0049] Next, when a “download” button provided on the bottom-left of thescreen is designated, the downloading of the skeleton data for thescreens designated as stated above begins.

[0050]FIG. 5 displays an example of a screen display of skeleton datadownloaded to the user terminal screen.

[0051] As shown in the same diagram, only the headline article iscomposed of image data being the real data, and no data exists in theareas where the text is printed on the normal newspaper page. Therefore,even though this is composed of image data, the total volume of theskeleton data may be suppressed extremely small.

[0052] By downloading the skeleton data of the designed screens (frontpage, the general topics page, the business general topics page, etc.)to the user terminal and designating a button on the browser forflipping through pages as shown in FIG. 5 (i.e., the left-pointingtriangular button in the information of the same diagram), it thusbecomes possible to read the headline information, going from the frontpage to the general topics page to the business general topics page,just like flipping through newspaper of a paper medium.

[0053] Next, when the user wants to read the article information thetext itself) based on the headline information, the user designates anysingle point in the designated area of the article displayed on the userterminal with the mouse. Based on designated coordinates for this area,the corresponding table explained in FIG. 1 is read out, and the URLcontaining the corresponding article information (the text) ID are readout.

[0054] The user terminal accesses the article data distribution serverbased on this URL. The article data distribution server accesses thenewspaper article database based on the instructed ID, and the articleinformation is read out and distributed to the user terminal.

[0055] The newspaper article database is capable of registeringnewspaper article data in various data formats.

[0056] The first of these formats is one in which the newspaper articlesare newspaper article data accumulated as image data having an ID pernewspaper page attached thereto.

[0057] In this case, all of the image data of the page containing thearticle information is distributed to the terminal device by means ofthe article ID linked to the headline information. FIG. 6 displays anexample of this, and designation of any of the headline informationdepicted in FIG. 5 produces a result that the screen containing thatheadline information, namely the entire article information of theskeleton data shown in FIG. 5, is displayed on the user terminal device.

[0058] The second of these formats is one for accumulating newspaperarticle data as image data to which an ID has been given per article ofthe newspaper as a newspaper article.

[0059] In this case, the only article information that is sent to theterminal device is the article information which corresponds to theheadline information by virtue of the article ID which has been linkedto the headline information. FIG. 7 is a diagram depicting an example ofthis. That is, designating headline information of the top article shownin FIG. 5 produces the result that the article information (the text)corresponding to this headline information is displayed on the userterminal device.

[0060] The third of these formats is one for accumulating newspaperarticle data as character code data to which an ID has been given perarticle of the newspaper as a newspaper article.

[0061] In this case, as shown in FIG. 9, the article informationcorresponding to the headline information is displayed on the userterminal device in a status configured in HTML format.

[0062] Note that, in the embodiment, explanation was made using anexample in which the skeleton data is received, and thereafter, thedesignated article information is downloaded from the article datadistribution server. However, the present invention is not limitedthereto, and it is also possible for the skeleton data and the articledata to be stored in a high-capacity storage medium such as a CD-ROM orsuch and installed into the hard disk device of the user's personalcomputer.

[0063] Even in a case that the network is not used, it is possible tosearch the article effectively so that the skeleton data is able to beread through as an index of each article.

[0064] Further, the display technology of color differentiation perarticle classification explained in the present embodiment is not onlylimited to display article information in stages, for example, but thistechnology can also be applied to be downloaded and displayed thenewspaper article in page units. In this case the newspaper article isobtained in page units, but it is displayed on the user terminalaccording to color differentiation by article classification, thereby ithas also a visual effect for the user to easily recognize the type ofthe article imaginatively.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of displaying information in stages,comprising the steps of: displaying as electronic data only readableheadline information from a newspaper page just as it is laid out on thenewspaper page; and displaying article information linked to theheadline information on a display device as readable display data, whenthe readable headline information is selectively designated.
 2. A methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the article information is comprised of acharacter code line.
 3. A method according to claim 1, wherein thearticle information is image data that a character code line isdisplayed as an image.
 4. A method of distributing information in stagesto be executed by a server, comprising the steps of: distributing fromthe server to a terminal device only readable headline information froma newspaper page as electronic data just as it is laid out on thenewspaper page; receiving a selection of any of the headline informationin the electronic data displayed on the terminal device; anddistributing the article information linked to the selected headlineinformation to the terminal device.
 5. A method according to claim 4,wherein the article information is composed of a character code line. 6.A method according to claim 4, wherein the article information is imagedata in which a character code line is displayed as an image.
 7. Amethod of distributing information in stages to be executed on aterminal device, comprising the steps of: displaying only readableheadline information from a newspaper page as electronic data just as itis laid out on the newspaper page; receiving a selection of any of theheadline information in the electronic data displayed on the terminaldevice; reading out the article information linked to the selectedheadline information; and displaying the article information which hasbeen read out.
 8. A method according to claim 7, wherein the articleinformation is composed of a character code line.
 9. A method accordingto claim 7, wherein the article information is image data in which acharacter code line is displayed as an image.
 10. A method ofdistributing information in stages executed by the server according toclaim 4, wherein all of the article in the newspaper are linked toheadline information, comprising the step of distributing all of thearticle information in the newspaper included the headline informationto terminal device when any of the headline information is selected. 11.A method of distributing information in stages executed by a serveraccording to claim 4, wherein all the articles in the page containingthat newspaper headline are linked to the headline information, andwhich comprises the step of distributing, when any of the headlineinformation on that page is selected, the article information of all thearticles of that page that includes the selected headline information tothe terminal device.
 12. A method of distributing information in stagesexecuted by a server according to claim 4, wherein an electronic datadistributed from the server to the terminal device includes readableheadline information and line-drawing information indicating partitionof arrangement on the paper the headline information belonging to.
 13. Amethod of distributing information in stages executed by a serveraccording to claim 12, wherein the inside of each partition forarrangement is indicated with colors according to the sort of thearticle information identified by the readable headline information. 14.A computer readable storage medium storing a program for making a serverexecute the steps of: distributing from the server to a terminal deviceonly readable headline information from a newspaper page as electronicdata just as it is laid out on the newspaper page; receiving a selectionof any of the headline information in the electronic data displayed onthe terminal device; and distributing the article information linked tothe selected headline information to the terminal device.
 15. A programfor making a server execute in stages the steps of: distributing fromthe server to a terminal device only readable headline information on anewspaper page as electronic data just as it is laid out on thenewspaper page; receiving a selection of any of the headline informationin the electronic data displayed on the terminal device; anddistributing the article information linked to the selected headlineinformation to the terminal device.